


Stories of Change and Transition

by anamatics



Category: RWBY
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe - Academia, Alternate Universe - The Mummy Fusion, Atlas has a Foreign Legion Don't Question It, Casual Worldbuilding Don't Mind Me, Evil Corporations, F/F, Faunus History For Fun and Profit, Gen, Libraries, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, tomb raiding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:01:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29907717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: Yang joined the Atlas Foreign Legion for an arm, not to get stranded deep in the desert in Vacuo with Team CFVY having stumbled upon a frankly terrifying piece of Remnant history that should have stayed buried. Now, three years, later she’s faced with an impossible offer: guide some scholars back to the desert or get shot for treason. Turns out facing your fears isn’t that hard when your life’s on the line.Blake just wants to stick it to the Atlasian scholars who dismiss her scholarship and won’t let her into the academy because she’s a faunus from KuoKuana that’s risen above her place to be one of the better librarians in Atlas. She’s heard tell of a place deep in the desert of Vacuo which was once sacred for early faunus, a place that may well sort out the historical origins of the stories of the God of the Animals, but she can’t get there without help.Or, Blake’s Evie and Yang’s Rick and Weiss is certainly not Jonathan but she is stuck financing this shitshow.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	Stories of Change and Transition

_Three Years Ago -_

The problem with the desert is that sand gets fucking everywhere. Yang spits, trying to get the grit from her mouth. The scarf that she’d been given when she got sent out to this godforsaken outpost to ostensibly take out a nest of desert lancers is useless. She tugs it up over her neck regardless and raises her fists, hoping against hope that the whipping wind would not get sand into the gears of Ember Celica. Dust cartridges are already hazardous enough to use in the weapon without the added complication of _sand._ Face half covered, Yang turns to the rest of the rag-tag group of Atlas Foreign Legion huntsmen she’s been sent this deep into the Vacuoian desert to fight with and holds her fists up, cartridges loading. They look as battered as she feels. She flashes a smile at Coco, who winks back at her, gun in hand and her attention on the sky above. “Steady,” she calls.

They’re ostensibly meant to be protecting Atlas’ dust interests in the region, but Yang isn’t stupid. This is exploratory. There is far, far more buried in this desert than dust. They’ve been on the retreat, chased into a rocky outcropping that is anything but natural. Now, after killing more lancers than Yang cares to count, they’re hunkered down behind a low set wall of stone the color of wet clay at the edge of a dry riverbank after a summer rain. It’s warm through the reinforced cloth at the knees of Yang’s jumpsuit, warm like the fire at her dad’s place on Patch, warm like Ruby’s smiles when Yang has leave and can make the trip home to see them both. This place is old, older than anywhere Yang’s ever been and she’s been all over Remnant with the Legion. It sets her teeth on edge.

Overhead, a queen lancer swoops down. The buzz of the grimm’s wings makes the very ground seem to shake. Sand rattles loose from the red brown stones at Yang’s knees and a deafening buzzing fills their ears. Still, though, Yang holds the line. “Steady!”

She’d known what she was getting into, signing up for the legion after she’d graduated Beacon Academy in Vale. She’d lost so much to get out of the academy alive, and Vale didn’t have the technology to _fix_ what she’d lost. How could you ever replace an arm for someone who preferred hand to hand combat?

Atlas wouldn’t share their tech, and Yang had no connections to the place save Headmaster Ozpin’s attempts to reach out to colleagues at the Atlas Military Academy for assistance. There was none to be had, but the offer that did come was tentative. There was always the foreign legion and it’s set five-year service period. Yang, all of twenty-three at the time, didn’t think much of the idea, but after nearly a year of poor work prospects and learning to live with a massive handicap, she’d hopped an airship to Atlas and enlisted without thinking too hard about the fact that she’d be nearly thirty by the time she was done with her service.

Her service was set to end four months ago. Yet she was still here, still grinding her teeth on sand because they’d been sent off into the desert at the whim of the Schnee Dust Company three days before her service period ended. General Ironwood had taken one look at her jacket and had decided that it was better she went with them at time and a half, rather than remove the team leader during such a dangerous mission. She’d been promoted too. Captain Xiao Long had a certain ring to it, even if all Yang wanted was to get the _fuck_ out of this desert.

The queen lancer swoops down and damn, it’s huge - one of the biggest they've encountered since they started their journey through this wasteland of sand and sweat and very little water. Yang shouts the command and they open fire, springing into action as their ropes sink into the grimm’s black flesh and pin it to the ground. “Velvet!” Yang shouts. “Now!”

Their colleagues spring into motion, Velvet flings herself into the air with Yatsuhashi’s help as he holds the ropes down, pushing her into the air with a grunt. Velvet moves like a gymnast in the air, the rabbit’s ears at the top of her head flattened back in concentration as she twists in the air, Anesidora in hand as she creates a replica of Coco’s gun. Coco braces herself against the wall, Gainduja flipping open to shoot up while Velvet shoots down with Anesidora’s illusionary gun. They’ve got one shot to get this right.

They fire, and Yang shoots a round to launch herself into the air. Fox flies toward the queen lancer’s head and together the combined force of their blows has the grimm vanishing into nothing. Yang lands, breathless, and holds out her arm to help Velvet to her feet. The buzzing has mercifully stopped, but Yang’s sure it’s only a temporary lull. Something doesn’t feel right, creeping down the back of her spine even as Velvet congratulates her on a well-executed plan. Coco high fives her as they all slump against the wall.

“What is this place?” Yatsuhashi asks. He’s got a cut on his upper arm that looks like it might need stitches.

Fox stares blankly around. He’s frozen, his hand on Yatsuhashi’s shoulder. Yang’s worked with Team CFVY long enough to know that Fox is just having a look around, borrowing his team mate’s eyes because his own no longer work. They all are looking around, taking in the ruins, trying to make sense. Fox lifts his hands from Yatsuhashi’s shoulder, rubbing at his forehead. “Pre-war ruins?”

“Way older than pre-war,” Coco answers. She pulls down her sunglasses and looks to Yang. “Was this what we were meant to find?”

Yang looks uneasily around the ruins, from their tall, crumbling obelisks to the red brown structures that seem to be half carved out of the sand itself. Fists raised, Yang tentatively steps further into the ruins, peering at some of the carvings on the closest obelisk. She can’t read the writing, but Velvet leans over her shoulder, frowning. “This is---” she tugs a notepad from her pocket and tears a sheet of paper from the page, using a stick of charcoal Coco passes her to take an etching. Velvet chews on her lips, ears flicking back and forth as she translates. “Sail the shallow sea…”

“No. Way.” Fox says.

They all know the story, even Yang, who’s never really interacted with many faunus. She’d done a paper on the potential ties between Anima and Menagerie in terms of faunus and human populations, and had spent hours pouring over genetic data that had been volunteered to her biology professor’s lab from across Remnant in order to see if there were specific markers that could indicate continent of origin. They’d been able to tell was that people from Solitas were better adapted to the cold and dark of living so far north, and that people from Anima and Menagerie shared similar genetic dispositions to prolonged periods of sunlight. Yang’s paper was on the shared history and mythology of the two continents, particularly focused on the coastlines, and how that could tie into genetic connections between the two islands.

“The way to Menagerie?” Yatsuhashi frowns. He looks up and down the obelisk and frowns, evidently not making heads or tails of the character-based language. “How can you read this Vel?”

“Most faunus can,” Velvet answers. “The language isn’t… taught in school or anything, but parents teach their kids. It’s a way of keeping the history alive.”

Yang looks up at the obelisk, one hand shielding her eyes against the blazing sunlight. “These are Faunus ruins?” The wind picks up. Yang glances around, but the ruins are silent. “What else does it say?”

Velvet stares at the writing. “This was… one of the places the God of the Animals stopped. It says something about a secret and about being left behind. Something about the dead – the dark? The word means both.”

“Is this a city of the dead?” Fox asks.

The wind whips even stronger. Yang loads a cartridge into Ember Celica, fists raised and scanning the ruins. Velvet bends close to the obelisk, her thumb running over a particular character, “It says something about…”

The ground opens up beneath them. Something grotesque twists in the ground beneath them. A hollow, sucking sounds fills the air. Yang slams her fists together as Fox throws himself forward in front of Velvet. Coco’s got Gainduja out once more, the supports slamming into the sand to ground her as she fires off round after round. The bullets pass through whatever the _thing_ is as though they’re nothing but air.

“HRAAAAAAAAA!” Yang surges forward, into the swirling vortex of sand, and for a moment it seems like it’s just the wind, until the screaming starts. Yang lowers into a defensive stance, before letting her fists fly, ready to win this fight before it’s even started. She swings her fist, catching something soft, and smirks at having landed a blow. She redoubles her efforts, her fists moving faster and faster. She's getting hits in, but on what she cannot see. Yet, in the moment when she feels something might be tipping in her favor, the ground shifts and something hard slams into the side of her head.

The world goes dark.

When she wakes up, she has no idea how long it’s been. The rest of her team is nowhere to be seen and she’s half-buried in sand. Yang gets to her feet and sways as soon as she’s upright. Ember Celica is full of sand and won’t collapse into her mechanical arm. She shakes it, and so much sand pours of the inner workings that she knows she's fucked if any of the lancers find her.

“Fuck.”

She’s alone, in the middle of the Vacuo desert with no water or way to call for an evac.

“Fucking fuck.”

**Author's Note:**

> See [here](https://kkglinka.tumblr.com/post/645049836548325376/even-knowing-that-written-languages-have-different) for meta on spellings of KuoKuana and it's various meanings. 
> 
> just want to throw it out there that library school is essentially information school and as someone in a doc program for information shits about to get weird in a very decolonial way.


End file.
